Monday, 29 November 2010

Private Benjamin
(1980)

80%



Don’t call me stupid!


Clever, feminist attempt by Goldie HAWN to outdo Woody Allen and be taken seriously as an actress. The humor is still there but this is an incisive (albeit repetitive) attack on sexually-insecure and unreliable White males who treat women as chattel.

This film sacrifices good structure to being a catalogue of abuses that hit the nail right on the head. HAWN is excellent as the Jewish princess who struggles to wean herself from her dependency on men - from her father to various husbands and boyfriends and would-be boyfriends - to become an independent woman who needs no-one to tell her what she can with her body (clothes, hair & sexual partner) and her mind. Like drapetomania, much of the humor here comes from the men believing that such a desire for independence is both pathological and un-feminine. this one makes you think as well as laugh in being Orlando for the non-avant garde.


Copyright © 2010 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

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Science:



No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.



Jacob Bronowski… (1908 - 74), British scientist, author. Encounter (London, July 1971).


Sleep of Reason:



The dream of reason produces monsters. Imagination deserted by reason creates impossible, useless thoughts. United with reason, imagination is the mother of all art and the source of all its beauty.



Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes… (1746-1828), Spanish painter. Caption to Caprichos, number 43, a series of eighty etchings completed in 1798, satirical and grotesque in form.


Humans & Aliens:



I am human and let nothing human be alien to me.



Terence… (circa 190-159 BC), Roman dramatist. Chremes, in The Self-Tormentor [Heauton Timorumenos], act 1, scene 1.


Führerprinzip:



One leader, one people, signifies one master and millions of slaves… There is no organ of conciliation or mediation interposed between the leader and the people, nothing in fact but the apparatus - in other words, the party - which is the emanation of the leader and the tool of his will to oppress. In this way the first and sole principle of this degraded form of mysticism is born, the Führerprinzip, which restores idolatry and a debased deity to the world of nihilism.